Disobedience by Naomi Alderman Continue reading
Tag Archives: suspense
Book vs Film: Notes on a Scandal
Book, because: Continue reading
The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop
In The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop, author J.B. Blackwood, takes her husband, Patrick, a famous film director, on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary. J.B. is nursing a secret – she has won a yet-to-be-announced major literary prize. A storm hits, and Patrick falls from the ship. That might sound overly dramatic, but actually, this book is a moral thriller, and the story unfolds from that point onward (and there’s a lot more to it).
In a story… the feeling of not knowing what happens next is often a thing of pleasure: the cornerstone of our delight… But the same feeling of not-knowing, as it happens in one’s real life, is rarely so pleasurable… Continue reading
Sample Saturday – a serial killer, a student, and siblings
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. Continue reading
My Latest Listens
Barbie and Ruth by Robin Gerber Continue reading
Pet by Catherine Chidgey
Pet by Catherine Chidgey perfectly fitted my reading needs at the time of reading. I was confined to the houseboat on the Gippsland Lakes, and this compact, spiky story was the engrossing book I needed.
It’s a suspense novel but not what you might imagine, because the focus is on a motherless twelve-year-old, Justine. Justine and her fellow classmates are drawn to their glamorous, charismatic new teacher, Mrs Price, who chooses her ‘pets’ by giving them special privileges and coveted extra time with her at the end of the school day. When a thief begins to target the class and Justine’s precious pen goes missing, a sense of uneasiness takes over. Continue reading
Quick (very quick) reviews
Yep, running out of time to draw a line under the reviews for the year. Some of these I’ve been meaning to write for eleven months. Lucky it doesn’t actually matter… Continue reading
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
I have frequently bemoaned the fact that I don’t find thrillers thrilling or suspense novels very suspenseful. Maybe I’ve been looking at the wrong books. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang was suspenseful and thrilling – no murderers or stalkers involved – just a book deal and ambitious authors. Quite literally, a literary thriller.
The story is told from the first-person perspective of author June Hayward. The novel opens with June meeting her rival/ frenemy for drinks – fellow author Athena Liu. The women graduated from Yale together and published their debut novels the same year. But while June flounders, Athena goes from strength to strength – novels, Netflix deals, writers festivals. Continue reading
My latest listens
I’m benefiting from an influx of new audios at my library (finally). Continue reading
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
In choosing fiction, my preference is for narratives driven by emotion rather than action – I want to be in a character’s head and to know what they are feeling, as opposed to being a bystander, ‘watching’ what happens to them.
Long Bright River by Liz Moore is very much an action-driven story. It tells of two sisters, Mickey and Kacey, whose lives begin in the same troubled home but then take very different paths . Kacey lives on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia, addicted to heroin, and doing what she has to do to feed her habit. Mickey also knows the streets of Kensington but that’s because she joined the police force. Although the sisters are estranged, Mickey keeps an eye out for Kacey. When a string of unsolved murders occur – the victims all young women with drug habits – Mickey fears for her sister. Continue reading